North Trail plan gets ambivalent response

Saturday

Mar 30, 2013 at 6:25 PM

The overlay district, which would be opt-in, goes to the City Commission for review Monday

By JESSIE VAN BERKEL

The “Welcome to Sarasota” drive — a roughly 2.5-mile stretch of U.S. 41 from the airport to downtown — is dotted with art museums and institutions of higher learning. Between the highlights are run-down motels and vacant lots, where prostitution and drug deals refuse to fade.

For years, the needy North Trail has been financially overlooked, business owners and residents say. The city and county do not have money scheduled to reinvigorate the area.

“The only tool we have available to us is a zoning change,” said David Morriss, a member of the North Trail Redevelopment Partnership.

Over the past three years the partnership has polished that option into the proposal city commissioners will review Monday: the North Trail Overlay District. The opt-in district is intended to entice development while keeping residents in the surrounding neighborhoods happy and safe.

Some people doubt it will accomplish either of those ends.

Major changes in the plan include: • A one-story increase in building height would be allowed in most areas.• City staff could sign off on development plans rather than requiring Planning Board approval.• Buildings must be set closer to the street with parking in back or on the side.

Marietta Lee, who runs the Marietta Museum of Art and Whimsy on the south end of the North Trail, is glad the zoning changes are optional.

Although she would love to build another story on her museum — where storage is lacking and rows of paintings fill her office — she worries about the conditions that come with joining the district, and said setback and parking requirements are too intrusive.

“You lose the right to say where your building should go on your property,” Lee said. “Why should you lose that right because they have a dreamscape?”

Jay Patel is a hotel owner and one of the creators of the overlay plan. He shares the partnership’s dream of drawing mixed-use buildings to the North Trail. With people living on the stretch, Patel said crime would drop and business would pick up.

But Ryan Chapdelain, a chief planner for the city who has worked on the plan since July, warned this is not the “silver bullet” that revitalizes the area. It is one step that — along with the current push to add several roundabouts to U.S. 41 — could eventually make the North Trail more urban and less of an “auto environment,” Chapdelain said.

Planner Karin Murphy, who used to work for the city, said the overlay has critical flaws, does not fix the broken land use that’s in place and lacked well-structured public participation.

“Transportation and other infrastructure should not be an afterthought, or piecemeal. Otherwise, it is unrealistic to expect property owners to locate buildings adjacent to U.S. 41 in its current configuration, and speed,” Murphy wrote in a letter to commissioners, objecting to the overlay on behalf of a couple property owners.

A trade-off

If the city proactively worked on development in the North Trail, like it has downtown with the Community Redevelopment Agency and Downtown Improvement District, things would turn around, Patel said.

“Every time the North Trail needs something, we need to mount a huge effort,” Patel said. “The best we can do now is not get in the way of developments that are happening.”

The overlay district would allow city staff to review plans for some buildings and sign off on them instead of the current system where a public body votes on the proposal. However, a developer must hold a community workshop early on if the building they are planning is larger than 5,000 square feet or if the they are creating a housing complex with more than eight units that’s within 100 feet of a residential area.

It’s a trade-off for neighbors, Chapdelain said.

“They get the level of engagement up front that they don’t get today,” he said, and are also guaranteed a certain setback that keeps new buildings farther from their homes.

Sommers still believes Planning Board approval is necessary to prevent developers from taking advantage of the community.

She said the North Trail Redevelopment Partnership is touted as a community effort, but primarily reflects the view of people who have a vested interest in development and stand to profit from the overlay changes.

Since the recession, the city has cut about 25 percent of its staff. Sommers said that “skeleton crew” cannot know all the ins and outs of proposed development.

“They approve everything. It takes the neighbors to say ‘What’s this on the plan?’ ” Sommers said.

The Planning Board voted for the North Trail Overlay District in February. Two members, Jennifer Ahearn-Koch and Susan Chapman, opposed several pieces of the overlay district — the administrative review, parking changes and requirement that once a property owner agrees to the overlay district, that property must always follow the district standards.